The umbrella-title of the movement known as Modernism covered a dizzying variety of smaller poetic movements: Imagism, Futurism, Surrealism, Dadaism and Objectivism are just a few of the more famous examples. For several tumultuous and wildly inventive decades it seemed impossible to write a poem without first issuing a manifesto re-imagining the purpose and nature of the poem and poetry. In this class we'll read the manifestos and write poems according to their revolutionary dictates: Futurist poems, Dadaist poems, etc. We'll move forward in time, looking at recent poetic trends (the Deep Image poem, the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poem, the New Formalist poem) and write poems according to these aesthetics, until we arrive where we are now—the age of the Post-Avant, Flarf, and The New Sincerity. Ultimately, students will write their own manifestos and write poems embodying their own revolutionary aesthetic. Along the way we'll see how different aesthetics establish different criteria (how can you tell a good Surrealist poem from a bad one? If Flarf uses intentionally bad writing, what makes one Flarf poem better than another?), fight a few Blog-wars, and write poems with radically different styles and subject matter.

Class Text: The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry (Two Volumes). Ed. Ramazani, Ellman, O'Clair

Course Pack.

Prerequisites:

ENGL 383, 384